Saturday, April 5, 2008

Blank Page (working title)

A blank page sitting before her… stark white and taunting. The hum of the washer, the steady thumping of a base from the speakers at party a few doors over. She sat staring at the computer screen in her dark room, dressed in only an oversized t-shirt. Her tousled hair fell into her face as she played with a spoon in her yogurt cup and a pair of black angular glasses perched on her small thin nose. She had an interesting appearance, not quite beautiful but by no means ugly. She tilted her head to one side then the other. The door bell rings and she gets up to answer.

There standing on her porch is a tall handsome young man about her own age, twenty-two, wearing a familiar brown suit holding a package and a clipboard. “Are you Leena Johnson?” he asked with a noticeable, what seemed to be, Australian accent.

“Uh yeah, that’s me.”

“Here you are. If I could just have you sign right there.” He said handing her the package and pointing to the dotted line.

“Oh sure, yeah let me just…” she struggled to balance both items and then ended up setting the package on the floor while quickly scribbling her already sloppy signature. She handed it back with a sheepish laugh and a pathetic smile.

“Thank you, have a great day.”

“You too,” she said slowly closing the door.

She always did that, acted lame in front of people, and not just guys either. It wasn’t like she was clumsy or anything she just had this nasty habit of making a fool of herself. She sighed and took the box into her small tiled kitchen.

After wrestling with the tape for a few moments she finally yanked open the top of the box with a loud pop. She dug her hands in through the packing material and her finger tips grazed something smooth and cold. Slowly she lifted out a beautiful, intricately designed colored crystal vase. Her breath caught, it was amazing, so fancy and so rich. It looked as if it had been taken from the queen’s castle in England. Suddenly realizing that this was not what usually came in random packages, she carefully set it down and started searching for a note or card. She found nothing, not one thing, no note no card there wasn’t even a return address. She looked at it a bit longer and decided she didn’t have time for such mysteries right now she had a story to write. She went back to her room and flopped down on the chair.